It's got an i7-2630QM, 12 GB RAM, and a 500 GB hard drive. Motherboard is a G73Sw (same name as the PC model), with USB 2.0 (three), USB 3.0 (one), HDMI, Bluetooth, and an SD card reader. Has a Blueray drive.

C Partition currently has only 5 GB free; I'm going to have to move some things around so that I can enlarge the partition.

Motherboard has this BIOS version installed:

American Megatrends Inc. G73Sw.205 02/10/2011 and it appears to be the most current available.

I have a lot of software installed. I am considering (for the first time ever) doing the Windows 8 upgrade in place; over the top of my current Windows 7 installation. I will have backups in case something goes wrong.

Question 1:

Any known issues with doing a Windows 8 Pro "Upgrade" in place? I had heard promising things (i.e., it went very smoothly for some people) back in January.

Question 2:

If upgrading in place, how much freespace should I start with on my C partition? I can make this happen; I just need a starting point.

Question 3:

Other than using Macrium Reflect on Windows 7 to take images of my local drive partitions and building a Win PE recovery disc with Reflect's recovery disk creation tool (before I begin), are there any other precautions I should take and/or any wacky stuff I need to look out for?

You need about 20GB (or more) of free space to do an upgrade... As for other questions about potential issues - I would read the threads by G73 owners who already did such upgrade:http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-ga ... ook-forum/Just browse or do a search - plenty of posts there, with "fixes" for missing functionality/drivers for this particular model.

Personally I would just continue using Win7 unless you actually NEED to upgrade, but whatever, it's your wasted time and money, not mine

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I have since checked out John's link, and I find it difficult to really see if there is a consistent problem. People have problems for all manner of reasons, and what I read is not cause for major concern for me.

The issues with keyboard and trackpad drivers as noted didn't really say if they were had by people who were doing a completely clean install of Windows 8, or if they did an install of Windows 8 "over the top of" the Windows 7 that comes on the G73 (including the drivers for said keyboard, trackpad, and other stuff). I am planning to do the latter for this laptop because I think Microsoft has improved this process. It's worth a shot anyway.

I think I'm going to go for it, maybe this weekend. I have been able to clear some junk away and enlarge my C partition to 280 GB, with 195 GB Free. After the upgrade is done, I'll shrink the C partition back down to something like 150-200 GB and distribute the freespace to my other partitions. I now have Macrium Reflect on this laptop, due to the "Great Acronis Failure of 2013" which was actually in the making for at least 5 years for me. All that's left now is for me to buy a new external USB 3.0 hard drive and back up everything like it was the Dead Sea Scrolls. Windows 8 upgrade license bootstrapper was purchased and downloaded months ago, and the link is on my desktop, so I think I'm ready to go.

Either I'm really good, or just confident in myself. ...um, or really stupid. What the hell, this is mostly a mobile music-making and gaming rig! There's no time like the present to find out how good I am (or how good I am not, as the case may be).

And...it's not a waste of time. It's a planned sidegrade that's really very badly tailored to my Asus G73, but I'm doing it because latest versions are good, right?

FTFY

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Any known issues with doing a Windows 8 Pro "Upgrade" in place? I had heard promising things (i.e., it went very smoothly for some people) back in January.

The Setup Assistant will aid you in tackling the known issues of the upgrade. Just make sure you have an Internet connection so that the Setup utility can obtain the latest data of known problems.

BIF wrote:

Question 2:

If upgrading in place, how much freespace should I start with on my C partition? I can make this happen; I just need a starting point.

JohnC covered this correctly with the answer of 20GB.

BIF wrote:

Question 3:

Other than using Macrium Reflect on Windows 7 to take images of my local drive partitions and building a Win PE recovery disc with Reflect's recovery disk creation tool (before I begin), are there any other precautions I should take and/or any wacky stuff I need to look out for?

Thanks in advance!

1. Sufficient Disk Space2. You'll need Admin credential to elevate the install.3. Make a backup of your system.4. Update drivers.5. Disconnect the UPS monitoring.6. Make sure laptops are plugged in.7. Disable anti-virus.8. Launch a command prompt with elevated priviledges and do a chkdsk c: /f (where C: is the system drive)9. Launch a command prompt with elevated priviledges and do a sfc /scannow10. Download and run the System Update Readiness Tool.11. Launch Windows Memory Diagnostics to check for defective memory.

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Ryu: Thanks! The upgrade went without a hitch. Exceedingly smooth; no problems with missing drivers or mangled partitions. Keyboard FN functions, lights, and other laptop devices seem to be functioning correctly, but it just struck me that I do need to test the camera. So far so good however; especially since this is the first time since about 1997 that I have tried an "over the old version" upgrade. It seems that Microsoft finally got this one down pat.

Congrats on the upgrade. Are you going to go to 8.1? I have upgraded my desktop to that and I really like the improved interface. I know when I went from 7 to 8 my video card smoothed out a lot (GTX 560ti at the time). Overall I love the way SSD boots and the overall feel of 8.1 puts to bed my gripes with win 8.

Yes, I will probably go to 8.1; but I haven't kept up with the forthcoming featureset, so I need to see first what it will break on my system.

And there is one potential show-stopper. The Win 8 UI is already too flat and low-contrast, giving me visual fits with some applications and websites. So if 8.1 goes further in that direction, then I think I will have to wait. I really, DESPERATELY need more choices for UI color and contrast (things like borders, scroll bars, OK/Cancel buttons, etcetera. For some, "3D look" is optional; not necessary. But for me, flat, grey on white, and borderless elements are hard to see and target with my pointing device.

The high-contrast themes are fugly, I need some customization options.

The UI wasn't enough to avoid Windows 8 for my home workstation and laptop, but to be honest, frustration is rising.

I did this upgrade on a standard Toshiba laptop, a gaming desktop (Clevo P170EM), and my gaming desktop, and all three went exceedingly smooth, without changing a thing beforehand. I didn't backup anything because I didn't really have anything to lose on the systems themselves that couldn't be very quickly recovered; and I went from Win 7x64 Pro on all three to Win 8x64 Pro.

I've since put the 8.1 preview on my desktop- after making a real backup- and it's gone very well, but I do believe that there will be a process needed to go back to 8.0 before loading the 8.1 RTM version. No worries for me; all of my Steam, Origin, and personal files are stored on other drives, and only the system programs and office applications are actually stored/installed on the main SSD.

I'd say that Win 8.1 is worth the upgrade, but if it's your only system, wait for the RTM release. For my part, Windows has been a smooth experience since Vista was released; it's not like any overarching functionality has changed since then, and I couldn't break Vista if I tried.

Well, it's working great after about a week; no issues, and all of the drivers seem to be working. It was a lot easier to do the upgrade than it would have been to install fresh and then reinstall all of my software and drivers.

The only issue I have now is what to do about the old "recovery partition" on the hard drive. It's a Windows 7 recovery partition and that license is no longer valid since i have upgraded it.

License is plenty valid. You can choose to roll back if you want. And if you choose to, the hdd might be your only way if Asus didn't give you media.

I didn't know/consider this. I just figured that if I tried to reinstall 7 that it wouldn't authenticate except to re-upgrade it to Windows 8.

Indeed, I didn't know or consider it either. But I see no reason now to go back to 7, not since my desktop has been running it since New Year's day. I might rather have that recovery partition reconfigured to provide recovery to current system...which is to say, Macrium bootloader and bare metal recovery.